Pineapples: for food and medicine

Use every part of a pineapple for food and medicine

We are going to extract some interesting chemicals from parts of a pineapple that we usually toss away. Welcome to the art of therapeutic eating. Do it with a pineapple!

To test if a pineapple is ripe enough pull out one of the leaves in the crown. If this comes out easily then it is ready to eat

Just a word of caution: pineapples thin the blood, so if you are on commercial blood thinners, going in for surgery or suffer from excessive menstrual bleeding please inform your doctor. Very few people are allergic to pineapple and if this is the case your mouth, skin or lips may become red, itchy or inflamed. This may also be a reaction to pineapple skin because it contains natural yeast spores and is quite prickly. Pineapples are healthy to eat and as medicine, they do not have nasty side effects – only benefits!

The skin of the smaller, sweeter Queen pineapples should have a lovely orange colour. At other times of the year we get the green skinned the Cayenne Pineapple. They are larger and not so sweet.

Pineapple is an acidic fruit and so is the juice. Citric, ascorbic and malic acids are found in high concentrations. This acidity reduces the strain on the pancreas so the demand on insulin is kept to a minimum. This is good news for diabetics! Pineapples are also rich in potassium and this helps to balance out diets that are too high in sodium (salt). Beta-carotene and vitamin A help to maintain healthy skin and lungs and are good for eyesight. Pineapple juice is a natural diuretic and helps to enhance kidney and urinary health as well as flush toxins out of the body.

Pineapples are rich in vitamin B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and vitamin C, manganese, copper, potassium, beta-carotene, folic acid and citric acid. This helps to boost immune functions, is good for digestion and contributes to healthy skin. Generous levels of manganese (almost 75% of the RDA ) promote bone growth and the production of steroid hormones like progesterone. The overall effect helps to strengthen bones. Pineapples are good for the heart and help to control blood viscosity as well as blood pressure. The fruit is rich in soluble and insoluble fibre and is beneficial to gut health as well as the removal of toxic waste. So eat a few pieces of pineapple a day and chew them well for a healthier alternative to taking fibre supplements that contain harmful chemicals like phytic acid.

Bromelain is one of the most beneficial chemicals we get from pineapples

Bromelain is a protein-digesting enzyme. It is present in pineapples and other members of the bromeliad family. These plants have the unique ability to consume insects! Their crown of leaves forms a central well that collects rain water. Insects drown in it and are digested by the enzyme we call bromelain so the plant can take up the nutrients. For us, it is thus an excellent digestive enzyme and that is why it is good to eat pineapple with foods that are rich in protein. To get more bromelain, we use the leaves, skin and central core of the pineapple for making juice. It is important to add water to the chopped up pieces. When all this material is macerated in an old-fashioned blender the bromelain as well as saponins and other beneficial alkaloids and phytochemicals are released into the liquid. This is strained through a cloth and voilà!

Cut the pineapple into attractive dishes – just bend the tip of a cheap old steak knife with pliers! Halve the pineapple and then cut out the flesh in one piece. Use a teaspoon to scoop out the juicy flesh that remains against the skin of your new dish – leaving the burs behind! This pulp is great as a topping for ice cream. You can’t add it to a jelly powder because it won’t set. That should tell you something about pineapple enzymes. Add this pineapple pulp to mixtures of rice, cheese and vegetables before grilling them in these dishes.

Beauty from pineapples goes more than skin deep

Pineapple is a beauty food – bursting with extra vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. These help to firm up the skin, boost collagen production and tighten up those wrinkly little lines. Get into the habit of rubbing the inside of the freshly cut pineapple skin over your face to help tone, tighten and treat the blemishes. Also rub it onto your hands if you notice any brown patches. You can take this treatment a step further by using the residue in the cloth after making juice out of the pineapple as well as the leaves and skins. Rub the cloth bundle all over your skin to help remove tired old dead cells (exfoliate). Allow the juice to stay on your face for as long as possible before rinsing it off. This treatment can also be used for treating psoriasis and nasty skin lesions and as always, those iffy brown patches. Make a poultice by wrapping the mixture in some paper towel.

Therapeutic juicing with pineapple offcuts and important phytochemicals

This juicing protocol is important for people who are serious about treating a chronic condition such as a respiratory or digestive disorder, candidiasis or any form of cancer. Juice is the foundation for daily micronutrition and it has to be freshly made and consumed within 2 hours to deliver optimal benefits. Forget the sugary juice pressed out of apples, carrots, grapes and beetroot. With devices that grind up only the fruit one loses the plot! No offence intended but that is not the way to extract over 90% of the vital nutrients because many of them are water soluble.

At best, those expensive Oscar juicing machines supply the compost heap with therapeutic levels of bromelain, antibiotics and vital nutrients. They cannot spin extracts out of parsley, olive leaves or ginger, let alone lemon skins. People go on about the vitamins and minerals (and lots of sugar) – forgetting all that has been left behind. Make glasses of Oscar juice by all means, but also use what comes out of Oscar’s ass – the fibre you are designed to chew. Carrot and apple residue is rich in precious organically produced food that still has so much to contribute to the medicine chest.

Apple juice by itself is not really beneficial. Why? Apples are best to chew as is so you get enough soluble fibre and pectin from the fruit. Apples form the cornerstone of detoxification protocols because of their pectin content and that is in the part you throw away when juicing them. Apple juice is often blended with other fruit juices to sweeten them up, so what you are drinking is a load of sugar and that is the problem. But always keep the apple cores, pineapple tops, skins and other offcuts for therapeutic juicing! Add them to Oscar’s organic residue and use it as part of my therapeutic juicing protocol.

What you will need is:

A simple, cheap and tough old fashioned electric blender jug.

Some water, preferably reverse osmosis or rain water.

To strain it you use a piece of cloth resting in a sieve over a jug. Or use a nut milk bag.

Good quality probiotics. I prefer the liquid brands as they contain a lot of bacterial strains.

Blackstrap molasses – the bitter stuff, is best. Otherwise the sweet molasses. Both are rich in minerals and are used in protocols to help shrink fibroids.

Soak the chopped up leaves, skins and offcuts (prebiotics) with 2 cups of water, a teaspoon of 15-strain probiotic liquid and a tablespoon of bitter blackstrap molasses overnight. The next morning you macerate this in the blender and sieve it through a cheesecloth or a nut milk bag. Now drink ye all of this not so tasty recycled juice because it is very medicinal! Preferably on an empty stomach, first thing in the morning. Have a second glass from the same mixture two hours later. Then drink a glass of spring or filtered water. Some people keep this juice but do not allow it to get too old because the water soulble components become inactive after a day.

Collect and freeze components for your medicinal juices

We can collect all kinds of chopped up leaves and keep them in a plastic bag in the freezer. It is fun to gather fresh dandelion leaves, olive leaves, ivy leaves, parsley (especially the stems we throw away), celery and other fresh herbs you find. Add fresh ginger offcuts, chopped up lemon skins, apple cores and other bits and pieces that are full of nutrients we normally discard. But most important of all is to combine all of this with chopped up pineapple skins and the leaves so we get the full thrust of bromelain. Use a pair of scissors to chop it into little bits.

I like to soak the mixture in 2 cups of water a few days before making the juice. This is to allow the probiotics you add to multiply like crazy. Adding a spoon or two of bitter black strap molasses to this brew makes the fermentation process even more efficient. Then when you tip this into the blender jug, toss in any apple cores and loose grapes that are lying around. Last but not least is a cunning trick – open up your used green tea bags or herb teas for more phytochemicals at no extra cost. Enjoy your new juicy medicine and soon you will notice how much better you feel.